Larry Brown Sports

The Dallas Cowboys are no longer the Cowboys of 1990s.  We all know that.  Even the younger players on the team know that.  As long as Tony Romo continues to find ways to lose games and the Cowboys prove they lack toughness, they will not return to the top of the football universe.

Yet Dallas continues to attract the same amount of attention and has as rabid a fan base as ever.  Despite the fact that his team has not advanced beyond the Divisional round of the playoffs since it won the Super Bowl in 1996, Jerry Jones continues to rake in the cash.  According to Deion Sanders, he has done so by setting false expectations for the team year after year.

“You got to give your hats off to Jerry Jones,” Sanders said Wednesday on his NFL Network show. “He creates this persona, this image that this team has a chance. They’re going to win it all every year. And that says a lot from the ownership position. But I don’t think they think about, ‘Hey, we’re going to the Super Bowl.’ It’s not like that. ‘We just got to get in the playoffs and anything can happen.’ So the expectations has lessened.”

In other words, Sanders thinks ownership is convincing the fans of something that even they don’t believe in.  Romo and company have done some reassuring as well, but it’s tough to tell if Deion is saying this as a back-handed compliment.  Whether Jones believes he has assembled a Super Bowl contender or not, it’s his job to make sure the fan base thinks he has.  The expectation has not lessened in Big D — only the results have.

When its quarterbacks are playing their best, the NFC East may be the best quarterback division in football. Most divisions have two or three viable starters at the quarterback position, but you could argue the NFC East has four.  Tony Romo may be a choke artist and Michael Vick may be an excuse-maker, but when healthy they rank among the top-10 quarterbacks in football.  Say what you will about Eli Manning, but he has kept the Giants in playoff contention every year.  What about Rex Grossman?

This season, Grossman has played efficiently enough for his Redskins to be in first place in the division after five weeks.  They have a long way to go if he wants to fulfill his promise, but Rex has protected the ball and put his team in position to win every week.  But would you call him the best quarterback in the NFC East? That may be a statement only Deion Sanders could make.

“I’m going to say something that could shock you,” Sanders said in a video on NFL.com that can be seen here. “Let me look at my camera and spit this game. Rex Grossman may be the best quarterback right now in the NFC East. Yeah I said it and I didn’t stutter. He may be. And the team with the most balance may be the Washington Redskins.”

Michael Irvin then looked into his camera and said he would take all three of the other NFC East quarterbacks over Grossman. Do the ‘Skins have the most balance? That is very possible.  The Giants are a different team every week, Romo can’t stop making mistakes, and the Eagles can’t stop anything on defense.  Is Grossman better than Vick, Romo, and even Manning? From a skill perspective, there is no way.  From a winning football games perspective, the records do the talking.  If the Redskins win the NFC East, Rex could validate Deion’s statement in some senses.

Fist pound to Shutdown Corner for the story.

Disgraceful. Disgusting. Shameful. Reprehensible. Sell out. Those were some of the words that came to mind as I witnessed Deion Sanders’ speech at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It wasn’t so much the speech that bothered me (though there are some aspects that made him seem phony). Rather, it was Deion’s choice to sully his esteemed gold jacket with a corporate logo, and plug his corporate sponsor during his speech, that ticked me off.

As you can see in the picture above, Deion prominently placed a pin with the logo of a sports apparel company on the right jacket lapel. Marshall Faulk also wore a logo pin, but his was on the left and hardly noticeable because it was covered by the flower. Deion’s pin stood out.

Then, four and a half minutes into his speech while Deion was thanking people in his career, he paused as he got to another category: sponsors.

“[sponsor's name] you see a bunch of kids around here with ‘truth’ on. It would have not been possible had it not been for [sponsor]. I thank you [sponsor], and I love you. Dearly,” Deion said, becoming the first person I know of who sold commercial time during a Hall of Fame induction speech.

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Deion Sanders went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in style. After spending most of his speech explaining how “Prime Time” was just a persona he created in order to help make money to take care of his mom, he expressed his unlimited swag by placing a bandanna on his Hall of Fame bust. Check out this video of him wrapping his bust courtesy of The Sports Geeks:

Here are a couple more looks at Deion doing his thing:

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Deion Sanders prides himself on working with young athletes and serving as a role model and father figure for them. One of his prized youngsters was Dez Bryant, who actually was suspended by the NCAA for the season for lying about his contact with Deion. Deion defended himself after Bryant was suspended saying he doesn’t prostitute kids.

The relationship between the two continued after college when Bryant was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys and given the sacred #88 jersey. But things changed to the point that Deion gave up on Bryant and stopped talking with him and advising him. Bryant says it was all related to him backing out of an endorsement deal with Under Armour.

“I never knew the reason for Deion not saying anything to me,” Bryant told ESPN Dallas. “The only thing I can believe is that when I stopped talking to Under Armour, Deion stopped talking to me. I never knew what Prime’s problem was.

“That’s my decision. That has nothing to do with Prime. That made me feel he must be getting something from Under Armour.”

Bryant’s response came after Deion ripped him on the radio for his whole sagging pants at the mall fiasco. Deion said that Dez needs help, and that’s when Dez said Sanders had an agenda due to Under Armour. Between the two of them, it’s hard to know what to believe. Deion is right in that Dez needs some help to avoid trouble, and Dez is likely right that Deion has an agenda to push despite his denials.

Not long ago, we interviewed legendary fighter Evander Holyfield who said he wouldn’t stop boxing until he became heavyweight champion of the world again. The man was completely serious and made many of us question his sanity. In response to Holyfield’s claim, our man Harvey Bars of Tirico Suave said “If you have a Sega Genesis game named after you, it’s probably time to retire.” Well that comment seemed so accurate it inspired us to examine every single Sega Genesis sports game to see where those athletes and coaches have gone. Get ready for a trip down memory lane.

Joe Montana Football – Montana went on to set a career-high in passing yards with 3,944 the season after this game was released on New Year’s Day 1990. The following season, an elbow injury essentially ended his time in San Francisco, and he retired after two relatively successful seasons in Kansas City. Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000, Montana was named the fourth greatest player in NFL history by the NFL Network.

Troy Aikman NFL Football – Following a year in which he posted a career-high 99.0 passer rating and led his team to its second-straight Super Bowl victory, this game was released on June 1, 1994. Aikman would play seven more seasons and win one more Super Bowl before retiring in 2000 due in large part to several concussions. He’s been nominated for an Emmy for his work as a color commentator for Fox Network and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.

Prime Time NFL Football starring Deion Sanders – Sanders had just been named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year when this game was released on Jan. 1, 1995. The two-sport star played in 137 combined games between the Reds and the Giants and missed the first half of that NFL season after knee surgery. Sanders retired in 2001, only to return three years later to play parts of two seasons with the Ravens. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year.

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Deion Sanders has found himself in the middle of two controversies recently, the most recent being of the greatest consequence thus far. Prime Time admitted to mentoring Oklahoma State receiver Dez Bryant who recently was ruled ineligible for lying to the NCAA about his contact with Deion. Deion didn’t deny having any contact with Dez but Bryant denied the contact because he supposedly panicked. Why was Dez panicking? Not because he thought Deion worked for NFL agent Eugene Parker, right? Couldn’t be. Deion had an interview with the NFL Network (for whom he acts as an analyst) where he said he doesn’t work for Parker and that he doesn’t have the time to worry about getting paid for recruiting players. His biggest point was that he helps African American players out of the goodness of his heart — that’s it. At one point Deion got off this comment:

I don’t have time to benefit from [recruiting players]. I don’t prostitute kids. I love them. I try to nurture them, I try to call them, challenge them, change them, and take them to another level and inspire them — that’s what I do.

Deion even sold out his agent, Eugene Parker, saying that Parker is the one who told him there were two teams trying to trade for Michael Crabtree — a piece of information that has led to an investigation into tampering charges. While I can buy that Deion doesn’t exactly work for Eugene Parker, his relationship with young players certainly is a conflict of interest because he’ll push players towards Parker. In this sense, he’s giving players bad advice some of the time. Deion also said he would continue to give players gifts to help them out. Once again, no conflict of interest because of his close relationship with Eugene Parker, right? Regardless of who’s behind all this, it’s pretty clear that both Dez Bryant and Michael Crabtree haven’t received good advice lately. You draw your own conclusions.